(darkhorizons.com)
After several years in development and lots of back and forth with the toy company, Warner Bros. Pictures is moving forward with "Lego: The Movie" for a 2014 release says Variety.
Back in 2008 Dan and Kevin Hageman ("Hotel Transylvania") were hired to pen the script for a live-action/animation hybrid family comedy based in the magical land of Lego.
Then last year Phil Lord and Chris Miller ("Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs") came onboard the project and now it has been greenlit with casting to begin in January.
Visual effects house Animal Logic is expected to provide 80% of the animation. Chris McKay ("Robot Chicken") is also onboard to co-direct the project which will be produced in Australia. Details will be announced at a press conference in Sydney this coming week.
Why Motion Capture Isn’t the Future
(oxfordstudent.com)Andy Serkis made his breakthrough to near universal acclaim as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, and this week he returns as Captain Haddock in Spielberg’s Tintin adaptation. However, despite Serkis’ deeply idiosyncratic style, you’d be hard pressed to spot him in either role. Why? Both films use motion capture technology, converting actors’ real movements into animation. Motion capture offers seemingly endless possibilities, allowing directors to shoot real actors and place them in fantastical scenarios. Indeed it prompted both the revered critic Philip French and Time magazine into lauding Avatar, despite its shaky plot and dialogue, as amongst the most important films of the last decade. In short there is only one question to ask. Where did it all go so wrong?
Perhaps you don’t understand what I just said. Surely my description of motion capture contained all the ingredients of an unmitigated success story. People flock to see the films, the critics are backing it to succeed, and to a degree it already has. The harsher reality is that motion capture technology has spawned a string of utterly mediocre movies, Avatar was a two hour visual rollercoaster relying almost solely on impact and novelty and that, much like CGI, the technical wizardry all too often descends into an unwatchable mess.
Take this list of films: Polar Express, Mars Needs Moms, Tron: Legacy, Avatar and A Christmas Carol. They have three things in common, firstly that they all make use of motion capture, secondly that each film cost a bomb to make and thirdly that each one has a script which could generously be called disappointing. Evidently points one and two are related; motion capture is mind bogglingly expensive. Avatar’s budget alone could have gone a decent way to ending world poverty, saving Greece and paying my student loan. And when studios spend a ton of money they like to earn it back hence point three, bad scripts.
The need to make big profits results in films as intellectually dire as they are visually spectacular. Studios who throw money at fancy technology want the world to know, and the best way to show it off is to make every shot a glamorous one. No more low key openings, the way to guarantee big bucks is through lavish, mindless spectacle.
You may wonder whether I think all big budget Hollywood movies ought to be rubbish then. I don’t. Studios have made, and will make, expensive and brilliant films. I just don’t think many of them will be motion capture. And here’s why. The best films are made by directors like Spielberg, Fincher and Nolan, a small handful who have earned their right to originality. The rest will only get big funding if they do what the studio wants, and studio executives tend to prefer flashy action flicks to Brecht adaptations. So most motion capture films will probably look great, sound great, and be forgotten by the time you’ve finished your popcorn.
Motion capture is, in the same way as CGI or 3D, a bit of a gimmick. On one hand you can use it to make Gollum, and Gollum was a great character. His eerie movements, unnerving facial expressions and menace were perfect. Gollum is the good side of motion capture. Unfortunately, for every Gollum there’s a Mars Needs Moms, a film intended as nothing more than a vehicle to show off a new technical process. That’s motion capture’s bad side, people making movies that should never be made, just because they can. If a plot sounds stupid or a line doesn’t work then painting the characters blue and putting them in space isn’t going to help. It’s time someone realised.
I expect that Tintin will be an excellent film, indeed I hope it is because I intend to watch it. But even if it turns out to be Citizen Kane 2 I won’t be cheering. I’ll be sitting at the back, clasping my head and counting down the seconds until Michael Bay jumps on the bandwagon.
Wellington's High-Tech $1 Billion Bonanza
(stuff.co.nz) Wellington's biggest technology exporters increased their revenues by almost 11 per cent to turn over more than $1 billion in the latest financial year, outpacing the national average of 5 per cent growth for the sector, according to an annual survey.
The Technology Investment Network report, sponsored by Trade and Enterprise and the Science and Technology Ministry, adopts a liberal interpretation of what it means to be a technology company, counting Auckland air- conditioning manufacturer Temperature and whiteware maker Fisher & Paykel Appliances alongside the likes of Rakon and information technology firm Datacom.
Wellington's strong contribution was largely explained by an 8.7 per cent jump in Datacom's revenues, which turned over $725 million in the year to March.
IT firms Fronde, Revera and Intergen, which are all based in the capital but operate to different degrees nationwide and overseas, also experienced strong growth, according to the report's author Greg Shanahan.
"The advantage the Wellington IT services companies have is they are increasingly becoming trans-Tasman companies and the Australian currency has moved in favour of New Zealand."
Shanahan estimated Weta Digital had increased its revenues by $10m to $110m "continuing its ascent in the film industry".
The combined tally for the country's top 100 tech exporters was sales of $7b, up 5 per cent, and exports worth $5b, up 4 per cent.
"Immortals" Dethrones Spielberg's "Tintin"
(rediff.com) The mixed reviews hardly mattered to the nearly 10 million viewers who saw Immortals, Tarsem Singh Dhandwar's action adventure set in ancient Greece.
The viewers in 36 world markets including China, Russia [ Images ], Japan [ Images ], the United Kingdom and North America have ensured Immortals is the number one hit in the world.
The film grossed an estimated $67 million in three days. It is yet to open in many territories including France [ Images ] and the South American countries so it could end its run with a very profitable if not spectacular gross of $250 million. The film cost about $75 million to make, half the budget of action heavy Hollywood films.
Tarsem, who prefers to be called by only one name, has made just three feature films in the past decade, though he has done many ad films and music videos. This is his first huge hit.
His first feature film was The Cell which grossed about $100 million. His second one The Fall was hardly seen by anyone except at events such as the Toronto International Film Festival. Now with Immortals, he will be a very familiar name to movie lovers worldwide.
The 3D film about the tough decisions the gods had to make after having sworn off from interfering in human affairs, stars Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke [ Images ], John Hurt and Freida Pinto [ Images ], who plays the oracle who can see the future and yet cannot control it.
"The film is heavy on action but it has a strong human element to it," Freida said last week. "I think it has a universal appeal and people everywhere can relate to the dilemma its characters face."
Tarsem became the first director of Indian origin in over six years to reach the number one spot at the US box office, according to box office analyst Gitesh Pandya.
The last film by a desi to open at number one in the US was 2005's Dukes of Hazzard from Indian-American filmmaker Jay Chandrashekar. M Night Shyamalan's last top spot debut came in 2004 with The Village. None of the films appealed to major critics.
On the red carpet in Hollywood last week and in other interviews, Tarsem asserted that he has made a film about the original superheroes, the Greek gods.
'These are the original superhero guys and they seem to have many more problems than, let's say, the superheroes that you have today. I just thought that with superheroes you either go to Marvel and make a movie with them, or you just pick up some good literature,' Tarsem told the trade publication The Hollywood Reporter.
A scene from TintinOutside North America, Immortals grossed about $32 million, and unseated Steven Spielberg's [ Images ] hit Tintin from the top perch. In its third week, Tintin made about $26 million, mostly in Europe, which was about 30 per less than the previous week, according to The Hollywood Reporter,
‘Transformers 3’ Drives Studio Earnings
(theepochtimes.com)Viacom Inc. announced better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter earnings, Thursday, and announced a massive stock repurchase program, which boosted its shares.
The New York-based company, which runs Paramount Pictures and MTV, announced earnings of $614 million, which is more than 33 percent higher than the $461 million in profits it recorded in the fourth quarter last year. Revenues were also higher at $4.05 billion, a 22 percent increase from last year. Both figures exceeded analysts’ expectations.
“2011 was an outstanding year…,” said Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman in a statement. “Paramount Pictures is benefiting from a disciplined franchise-centric approach that has produced an unprecedented number of hits in the domestic and international box office.”
Sales from Filmed Entertainment topped $1.79 billion, which comes mainly from its Paramount unit. The results were driven by the popular “Transformers” franchise. The last movie of the trilogy, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” was released this summer and generated $1.1 billion in gross revenues in theaters globally, according to data from Box Office Mojo. It became the first Paramount movie ever to gross more than $1 billion.
Godfather of FX Make-Up Dick Smith Recognized with Honorary Academy Award
(dreadcentral.com)One of the heroes of our genre has been honored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science. Dick Smith, who has rightfully been sired with the title of the Godfather of Makeup, was given an honorary Governor's Academy Award for his unparalleled contributions to the field of makeup in the film industry.
As he was always a behind-the-scenes guy, let me catch you up on just what Dick Smith is responsible for creating. Does the name Regan MacNeil mean anything to you? That's right, Smith transformed cute little Linda Blair into the beast that launched 1,000 nightmares in The Exorcist. For me, that alone is enough to grant the man the all-time title, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. Smith shared an Oscar in 1984 for transforming F. Murray Abraham from his 40's to his 80's in Amadeus and was nominated again for morphing Jack Lemmon from a spry 65 deep into his 80's in Dad.
In addition to The Exorcist, some of Smith's other work in the horror genre includes The Stepford Wives, The Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Sentinel (1977), Altered States (1980), Scanners (1981), Ghost Story (1981) and The Hunger (1983). He also worked in television on a show you may remember, "Dark Shadows." And again, this is just a small sample of his work.
Outside of horror, Smith worked on legendary films such as The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Miracle on 34th Street (1959), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Taxi Driver (1976). He initially got his start working for NBC creating techniques with foam latex and plastic for live television. No pressure there. Smith held this position from 1945 to 1959 and expanded the roster of artists from one to 25 by the time he left.
Always being a man willing to share and teach his techniques, in 1965 Smith wrote Dick Smith's Do-It-Yourself Monster Makeup Handbook, which his protégé, Rick Baker (legendary makeup artist with an incredible resume of his own, including Star Wars, An American Werewolf in London and Men in Black to name just a few), credits for inspiring his career.
Smith's techniques were unique and originally shunned by other makeup artists. But it wasn't long before they realized his work was not only an improvement on their methods, but he was reshaping the field. One of Smith's notable changes involved layering multiple foam latex pieces, overlapping them to allow an actor full range of motion. He executed this to perfection in 1970's film Little Big Man when he aged Dustin Hoffman from 30 to 121 years old.
Dick Smith changed the landscape of makeup in film. He raised the standards and made it a respected discipline. And amazingly, Smith created every effect during his 40 years in the business in his basement studio in Larchmont, New York, then flew to the movie sets when filming began. Maybe not the original life path for a guy who was initially a pre-med zoology major at Yale University, but the motion picture industry certainly thanks him for the change of heart.
Calling all students: The 10th Annual VES Awards is Open Now
(visualeffectssociety.com)Submit a two-minute project to the VES showing your visual effects prowess and you could win a trip to LA and Autodesk products
The Visual Effects Society is now accepting submissions for the annual Student Award, sponsored by Autodesk, which honours outstanding achievement in visual effects in a project created by a student or group of students.
So if you’ve created a stunning visual effects sequence or a short film, just enter the competition and you could win a trip to Los Angeles, an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of a local VFX facility and a copy of Autodesk Maya Entertainment Creation Suite Premium 2012 or Autodesk 3ds Max Entertainment Creation Suite Premium 2012.
The closing date for submissions is 30th November 2011.
VES website: http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/ves- awards
Tintin is Spielberg's Highest Grosser in India
(movies.ndtv.com)Motion-capture movie The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of The Unicorn has earned about Rs.7.35 crore over three days, making it the highest opening for any Steven Spielberg film in India.
The film released with over 350 prints in both English and Hindi in the 3D and 2D formats. Apart from the big cities, this is the first movie to open simultaneously in smaller centres like Alwar, Gwalior, Akola, Amravati, Madurai, Salem and Trichur.
"Not only is the animated genre gaining ground amongst all age groups in India, but Tintin is unique in the sense that the franchise is enjoyed and appreciated by a very wide audience right from kids to adults who grew up on Tintin," Kercy Daruwala, managing director, Sony Pictures India, said in a statement.
"There is an amazing passion for both the franchise and the film in India with even celebrities like Aamir Khan giving the film an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
"The film's collections have increased day upon day and we expect to see the film sustain strongly based on excellent word of mouth," Daruwala added.
Tintin fans can't stop heaping praise on the animated franchise and term it an intelligent film.
"There is not a dull moment in the movie. You never feel you are watching animated characters because they are so true to life. And at the same time it doesn't not step away from the Tintin cartoon," said Brishti Ganguly, a young school-going fan.
Praising the film, Anand V, another Tintin fan, said:
"Spielberg has not made a predictable film. He has merged three-four Tintin comics in the movie in a very intelligent way. The characters are fantastic--Captain Haddock is lovable. All the characters live up to their images."
Wallace & Gromit Charity to Auction Artwork by Nick Park
(guide2bristol.com)Academy Award Winning Animation Director Nick Park alongside some of the greatest talents in the world from the Animation and Television Industry are donating original artwork and signed memorabilia for an online auction to support Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Appeal, the official charity for the Bristol Children’s Hospital.
The auction is already attracting a lot of interest as it is unique in bringing together a collection of unique and rare pieces by some of the world’s best animators and pioneers such as Ray Harryhausen (Jason & The Argonauts; Clash of the Titans), Pixar Animation Studio’s John Lasseter (Toy Story, Cars, Cars 2,) and Pete Docter (Up, Monsters Inc ), and Richard Williams, the Animation Director and Character Designer of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The auction will be hosted on eBay from 01-10 November. All money raised at auction will support the Grand Appeal’s campaign to help the region’s specialist cardiac service and support provision of a state of the art Echo cardiogram scanner that can detect, diagnose and manage heart conditions in children with extreme accuracy. It will also enable the paediatric cardiology department to be refurbished to provide a child-friendly and comforting area for patients and their families to include increased space to carry out scans, new seating, sensory lighting and play equipment.
There are over thirty individual pieces being auctioned to support the charity from twenty of the world’s best artists. Lots available in the auction include:
• A Nick Park signed and hand painted watercolour featuring characters Wallace and Feather’s Mcgraw.
• A signed and hand drawn ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit” by Richard Williams exclusively created for this auction.
• A signed, original pencil sketch of Morph by creator and Aardman co-founder Peter Lord created exclusively for the auction.
• A John Lasseter signed copy of To infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, complete with a hand-drawn Buzz Lightyear doodle on the inside cover
• A Ray Harryhausen signed photograph and poster. Animation and special effects legend Ray no longer signs autographs but has made an exception for the Wallace & Gromit charity auction
• A unique and original, signed pastel drawing by Pixar Animation Studios director Pete Docter, featuring Mr Frederickson from the motion picture Up.
Nick Park, creator of Wallace & Gromit, and patron of The Grand Appeal said, "I'm overwhelmed by the generosity of artist and animation friends from around the world who have kindly created and donated such beautiful pieces of signed artwork in support of the Wallace and Gromit Grand Appeal Animated Art Auction. This is a fantastic opportunity for animation fans, and the public alike, to acquire art and animation treasures so rarely seen at auction. I'm quite tempted by a few of the pieces myself!”
What's Don Bies Up To Now?
(theforce.net) Catching up with the former ILM Model Maker and Star Wars Droid Wrangler.
Back in 2008, Don started working on a traveling European NASA exhibition. In January 2011, "NASA: A Human Adventure" (www.ahumanadventure.com) opened in Stockholm, Sweden. Currently, it's on the way to Madrid, Spain, scheduled to open December 15, 2011.
Don conceived, designed and is curating the exhibition. He put together a team of former ILM colleagues to work on it and create content for the project. They created a company, WhiteRoom Artifacts, LLC and just launched their website: www.whiteroomartifacts.com.
As with any new venture, getting the word out is really important, which is where you can help. They have a Facebook page, and would love fans to come "Like" it. https://www.facebook.com/pages/White-Room-Artifacts- LLC/132155803549275
White Room has several projects in the works, and will Don tells us they will be offering restoration services (among others) in the near future.
'Immortals': Five Secrets Revealed
(mtv.com) We've seen a zillion big-screen takes on Greek mythology, a zillion slo-mo fight scenes, a zillion eye-popping 3-D sequences. But what's crazy about Tarsem Singh's "Immortals" is that while we've seen this type of thing so many times before, we've never seen any of it quite like this. "Immortals" is, in a word, beautiful.
How did Singh and his team take the story of King Hyperion's (Mickey Rourke) attempt to conquer the world and humiliate the Gods — and Theseus' (Henry Cavill) against-all-odds quest to stop him — and make it fresh, make it unique, make it beautiful? For answers to those questions, MTV News turned to stunt coordinator Artie Malesci, who revealed five secrets about "Immortals."
The Titans Fight
"Immortals" begins with the mythical Titans, those precursors to Zeus and his Olympian clan, in prison. You just know they're going to escape at some point. And when they finally do, their fight against the Olympians is not just amazing to watch, it also proved to be the most challenging fight scene in the entire movie.
"The Titans' fight was the hardest — figuring out the choreography and the sets and the motion-capture work," Malesci said. "It wasn't until way late in the process that we got the idea about how to do it. Were we going to go with motion-capture or was it going to be animated? We spent a lot of time coming up with ideas and showing them to the director and getting his input. We ended up doing it motion-capture, but within this very challenging environment. That was very, very hard."
Battling in Three Dimensions
As Malesci explained it, coordinating stunts and fights for the big screen is never easy, but it's particularly complicated when the movie is being shot in 3-D. "It's difficult because it's two cameras. You've got to move them around," Malesci said of the dynamic, time-dilating fights. "We shot the fights at 60 frames, and they can slow it down in [post-production] to 24 frames, which makes the impact look harder."
He added, "If I wanted to smash your head into a wall, we wouldn't do it in real time. We'd do it fairly slowly. But we film it at a higher speed and ramp it down, so it looks like I really smashed your head into the wall. This way, you don't hurt people."
The Minotaur Head
The film is filled with cool weapons and gadgets — from the CG Epirus Bow that drives much of the plot to a gruesome metal bull that stands over a fire and whose hollow belly provides a deathly chamber for some unfortunate prisoners. One of the most creative contraptions is a barbed-wire Minotaur head worn by one of Hyperion's warriors. Sure, it looks cool, but it was demanding for actor Robert Maillet to wear and then to do anything other than stand around looking badass.
"We thought it was a great idea," Malesci said. "But we really had to stay within the limitations of what the actor could do. He couldn't see well but the mask still had to be used as a weapon, so we made two versions: There was one made of metal for non-fighting scenes. And for the fights, there was one made of rubber. That was a challenge trying to make rubber barbed wire that could hold its shape when we were going [into] the fight."
Gods in Heaven
The single hardest sequence to capture in the entire film, Malesci told us, is one that appears in trailers — gods floating and fighting against one another in heaven. How Tarsem and his team pulled it off has to be heard to be believed.
"It took a month to figure out how to do that," he said. "I thought we'd do it with wires. But instead, we built a glass floor 30 feet in the air. We made an actual elevator system using these giant computer-controlled winches to move the camera, starting right below the actors' feet and then dropping it as fast as we could without getting any kind of camera shake."
Give the Dog an Oscar
Malesci also pointed out one unexpected scene that left him, a veteran stunt coordinator with decades of experience under his belt, utterly impressed: a sequence in which a dog has to pick up the Epirus Bow on cue in the midst of a battle scene.
"The dog was incredible!" Malesci laughed. "This dog, his name is Crash. The dog was able to deal with anything we threw at it — fire, fighting, rocks. Amazing!"
Techs Vie for Oscar Spotlight -The Contenders 2011: Visual Effects
(variety.com) The surest route to a visual-effects Oscar is to show the Academy something it's never seen before, whether it's Brad Pitt transformed into a wizened child in "Benjamin Button" or a completely realized alien world with indigenous inhabitants in "Avatar."
This year's slate of vfx contenders is more crowded than ever, as the studios lean ever more heavily on f/x-driven franchises and sequels, and if nothing boasts quite the "wow factor" of "Avatar" there are still pics that can argue they've raised the bar for the craft.
Fox's "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" took "Avatar's" performance capture tech and applied it to apes -- who turned out to be the pic's most compelling characters. It's a landmark film: the first pic where the mo-cap of the digital, non-human characters carries the movie. ("Avatar's" Na'vi resemble the elongated human figures of fashion drawings.)
"Captain America: The First Avenger" took hunky Chris Evans and convincingly shrank him to a scrawny asthmatic. When the pic's "super-soldier" serum restores Evans to his bulked-up self, it's hard to know which was "real" and which was vfx. "Green Lantern" also featured body replacement for lead Ryan Reynolds every time he was in the superhero suit.
For sheer scale nothing beats the massive "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," which was in 3D besides (as were "Captain America" and "Green Lantern").
This year sees the vfx category come of age, with five nominees, so the vfx branch has expanded its "bakeoff" to 10 pictures. They hope to open the door to more "supporting f/x" pictures like last year's "Hereafter." "The Tree of Life" could snare a nom that way, as might "Anonymous," with its recreation of Elizabethan London.
This might be the year an animated pic at least makes the bakeoff. The vfx in "Tintin" and "Rango" come from influential vfx studios Weta and ILM respectively and rival the effects in the year's live-action pics.
"Captain America: The First Avenger" (Paramount)
Vfx supervisor: Christopher Townsend
Highlights: As "Skinny Steve," muscular Chris Evans becomes 4F Steve Rogers, with Evans' performance intact; combination of prosthetic and CG for the Red Skull; digital environments (Hydra factory); podfighter aerial fight.
"Green Lantern" (Warner Bros.)
Vfx supervisor: Jim Berney
Highlights: Body replacement for Ryan Reynolds and Mark Strong when in their superhero suits; digital characters Tomar-Re and Kilowog; the villain Parallax.
"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" (Warner Bros.)
Vfx supervisor: Tim Burke
Highlights: The Room of Requirement; the escape from the bank via dragon; the Battle for Hogwarts, with CG creatures and CG Hogwarts; the attack on the wooden bridge; the fire creatures.
"Hugo" (Paramount)
Vfx supervisor: Rob Legato
Highlights: "The art of it," says Legato: completing the visions of designers and cinematographer with CG; seamless shots that run over multiple sets in ways that would have been physically impossible with 3D camera rigs; dream sequences; train station accident.
"Real Steel" (Disney)
Vfx supervisor: Erik Nash
Highlights: The combination of practical and CG robots, intercut seamlessly; virtual environments for "metal valley" and the big arenas; thousands of fans in the seats, done as photographic elements, not CG.
"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" (Fox)
Vfx supervisor: Joe Letteri
Highlights: First, those apes, especially Andy Serkis as rebel leader Caesar; Serkis will get an Oscar push.
"Transformers: Dark of the Moon" (Paramount)
Vfx supervisor: Scott Farrar
Highlights:The Transformers, but especially Colossus crushing the building; the three-way fight between Optimus Prime, Megatron and Sentinal Prime; Starscream. Farrar notes the robots are more expressive.
"X-Men: First Class" (Fox)
Vfx supervisor: John Dykstra
Highlights:The third-act battle, with CG beach, fleet and ocean; turning January Jones into crystalline Emma Frost; Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his energy-absorbing effect.
In the mix
* "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn" (Paramount)
* "Anonymous" (Sony)
* "Immortals" (Relativity)
* "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" (Paramount)
* "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" (Disney)
* "Rango" (Paramount)
* "Super 8" (Paramount)
* "Thor" (Paramount)
* "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1 (Summit)
* "War Horse" (Disney)
Pixar's Set the Bar Too High
(mercurynews.com) I walked out of the theater, strangely disappointed.
I didn't know why. I had taken my girls to see a movie about a talking cat, which isn't usually my first choice (talking wombats are far more suited to my sophisticated tastes), but the cat wore a hat and no pants, which is pretty funny when you think about it.
So why was I glum? It was wet and gloomy out. There were far too many people on the sidewalk. We were trudging up five stories worth of stairs because one of the kids has an aversion to elevators. But that wasn't it.
My wife was at a baby shower and, to show what an incredibly involved father I am, I had dropped 40 bucks taking the kids to a "bargain" matinee instead of sliding them in front of the television so I could take a long afternoon nap. Oh, and the "bargain" tub of popcorn cost $7. But that wasn't why I was irritated.
Picking it apart
My mood was dark because "Puss in Boots" was entirely mediocre. I expected more from a film where the main character is a cat with an accent and a sword. I actually sat there and analyzed what wasn't working for me, as if I were a film critic about to debate Roger Ebert.
So why does an adult expect a kid's film to be good? Kids' films are supposed to keep the kids placated for a couple of hours, not entertain adults. When I was a kid, the adults would turn kids loose in a theater and go shopping for a couple of hours. Grown
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men aren't supposed to have high expectations for a movie about a talking cat that doesn't wear pants.
Maybe it was hearing Salma Hayek voicing the cat's love interest, without actually getting to see her for two hours, that bothered me and caused some strange, interspecies attraction-confusion.
Then it hit me -- I blame Pixar. Even though "Puss in Boots" isn't a Pixar film, I blame the folks over in Emeryville for raising the bar too high.
I blame Pixar for making movies so great they had to create an Oscar category for animated films that prompt people like me (sophisticated men with superior taste in all things, except for maybe clothes, food and home decor) to actually look forward to spending two hours in a theater stuffed with parents who don't realize their kids are kicking my chair and yapping too much.
Too-perfect Pixar
I blame Pixar for making all those stupidly wonderful characters both kids and adults identify with and love in the "Toy Story" films. I blame them for my compulsion to watch "The Incredibles" when no one else is home. I blame them for the beautiful subtlety that made my insides shift watching the lonely robot in "WALL-E." I blame Pixar for making me emotional when Nemo's mom goes circle of life. I blame them for making me root for the underdogs in "Ratatouille" like I was watching a team from Oakland in the playoffs (it could happen ... someday).
I also blame Pixar for "Cars 2" for entirely different reasons. But I suppose they can't win 'em all.
Even though Disney, which now partners with Pixar, is where popular film animation began, and even though it made a nice animation comeback through the '90s with "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King," the studio still makes kids movies that feel like kids movies. Pixar has shifted the bar by moving beyond good cartoons into superior animated filmmaking. Which means I can take two little girls to see an animated film from another company and even though the kids loved it, I walked out disappointed.
Thanks, Pixar.
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